A blood price is a payment made when a person has killed or injured another person, or their servant, or one of their animals. The money may be given to the victim's family or their lord.[1][2][3] In Westeros, the blood price is an old custom from before Aegon's Conquest, and no longer practiced.[1] It may still be a tradition beyond the Wall[4] and in Slaver's Bay.[2]
History
[edit]In the Reach, during the days of the House Gardener Kings of the Reach, you could pay a man a blood price if you had slain one of his animals or peasants.[1]
In 211 AC, near Standfast, Ser Eustace Osgrey's sworn sword, Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield, attacked Wolmer, a peasant in service to Lady Rohanne Webber, cutting his cheek to the bone. Hoping to prevent Lady Rohanne avenging the assault by killing Bennis, Ser Eustace recalled the old tradition of the blood price. He sent his other sworn sword, Ser Duncan the Tall, to Coldmoat with a silver stag for Wolmer, and three stags for Lady Rohanne, for the insult. However, Rohanne rejected the offer.[1]
According to a semi-canon source, in 255 AC, Lord Tytos Lannister sent his good-father, Ser Denys Marbrand, to capture Lord Walderan and Lady Ellyn Tarbeck and bring them to Casterly Rock to answer for their crimes of taking neighboring holdings by force. However, Roger Reyne, Lord of Castamere and Ellyn's brother, led a host that attacked the Marbrand men in the night, slaying hundreds including Denys. Though calls went out for war, Ser Reynard Reyne convinced Tytos that the attack was a misunderstanding, claiming that Roger was unaware of Denys's identity and thought he was attacking outlaws. After Reynard offered apologies and a blood price to House Marbrand, Tytos pardoned Roger Reyne, and Lord and Lady Tarbeck as well.[3]
Recent Events
[edit]A Dance with Dragons
[edit]In Meereen, Queen Daenerys Targaryen frequently receives petitioners asking for repayment for the sheep that her dragons have killed and eaten. One day a farmer comes to the audience chamber, carrying a sack of burned and cracked bones, claiming they are the remains of his child Hazzea, and that Drogon had killed and eaten her.[5] While one of Daenerys's advisors, Skahaz mo Kandaq, tells her to kill the man or at least have his tongue out to keep the girl's death a secret, instead Daenerys chooses to pay a blood price. No one can tell her the value of a daughter, so she pays the man one hundred times the value of a lamb, with more money to be given each year on Hazzea's nameday, as long as the farmer never tells anyone a dragon killed her.[2]
At Castle Black, Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, arranges with Tormund Giantsbane to allow three thousand wildlings through the Wall to safety. Tormund has the free folk hand over their wealth or anything of value to the Watch, along with one hundred boys as hostages. Tormund calls this Jon's "blood price".[4][6]
Quotes
[edit]Duncan: Ser Eustace sent me here to pay the blood price.
Rohanne: The blood price? He is an old man, I know, but I had not realized that he was so old as that. Does he think we are living in the Age of Heroes, when a man's life was reckoned to be worth no more than a sack of silver?[1]
Your blood price, Lord Crow. I hope the wailing o' their poor mothers don't haunt your dreams at night.[6]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 The Sworn Sword.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 11, Daenerys II.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The World of Ice & Fire: The Westerlands (unabridged). georgerrmartin.com
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 53, Jon XI.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 2, Daenerys I.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 58, Jon XII.